"Modernism As Muse And Source Of Amusement" Saturday, April 12, 2008 By Kenneth Baker The San Francisco Chronicle

    The Handmade Target, 22" x 22", Lightjet c-print, 2008

I borrow one of my critical mottoes from an American Zen teacher, who said that all we really have in this life is what we notice. Among visual artists, photographers enjoy a unique advantage - though not all exploit it - in that their medium can combine noticing and sharing in a single form.

Bay Area photographer Airyka Rockefeller does this in the pictures she shows at Jack Fischer's.
Who, having seen the almost Dubuffet-like makeshift archery target in "Handmade Target" (2008), would not wish to describe it as directly and appreciatively as she does?

Yet not everything in her pictures can have presented itself so simply as camera-worthy. "The Auto Body" (2008), an image equally rich, mundane and grotesque, suggests an acquaintance with the late painting of Philip Guston (1913-1970), as well as an awakened eye for how the camera will transfigure what it and we see.

Airyka Rockefeller: Crooked Meadow: Photographs. Through May 12. Jack Fischer Gallery, 49 Geary St., San Francisco. (415) 956-1178, www.jackfischergallery.com.

E-mail Kenneth Baker at kennethbaker@sfchronicle.com.